Collision Avoidance for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in the Presence of Static and Moving Obstacles

Abstract

A new collision-avoidance procedure for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the presence of static and moving obstacles is presented. The proposed procedure is based on a new form of local parameterized guidance vector fields, called collision-avoidance vector fields, which produce smooth and intuitive maneuvers around obstacles. These vector fields are generated from a decomposition of UAV kinematics and a proximity-based velocity modulation. The proposed kinematic decomposition encodes both collision avoidance and constant-speed motion for the UAV. As such, the resulting maneuvers follow nominal collision-free paths, which are referred to as streamlines of the collision-avoidance vector fields, with constant speed. Next, in accordance with the computed guidance vector fields, different collision-avoidance controllers that generate collision-free maneuvers are developed. Furthermore, it is shown that any tracking controller with convergence guarantees can be used with the avoidance controllers to track the streamlines of the collision-avoidance vector fields. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach and its ability to avoid collisions with static and moving pop-up threats in different practical scenarios.